G. Mackenzie Bacon, M.D., acted as Medical Superintendent of the County Asylum in Cambridgeshire, England. In 1870, he wrote a short treatise called On the Writing of the Insane. Bacon wrote a short introduction to his volume, but even with that, it isn’t entirely clear who he felt he was writing for. Nor is it entirely clear what point Bacon intends to make. He presents many documents that have come to his attention in his duties as Superintendent of the County Asylum, and feels very free to criticize the writers, but proposes no particular therapeutic approach or considerations other than institutionalization.
Letter from a patient. Reproduced in On the Writing of the Insane.
The book is made up of a single lengthy essay by Bacon, illustrated with examples of, literally, the writing of the insane. By “writing,” Bacon means both penmanship and composition, making something of a portmanteau word out of the single term. Bacon critiques both aspects of writing, but focuses more on the content of the letters and memoranda composed by his patients.
While Bacon does not use names or what we would now consider to be private patient information, he comments on the productions he cites in what seems like an unusual professional manner.
In one case, he quotes at length a letter he received from the relative of a patient and goes on to say,
This woman, married, and able to attend to her family…though from her letter it might be supposed she was incapable of any exertion. Now, such a state of mind is more nearly allied to insanity than anything else, and some light is found on its nature by the fact of her brother being insane. (8-9)
The productions Bacon cites are fascinating to examine and the tangled stories some of his patients have managed to achieve to explain their situations and problems are compelling to read. The patient whose letter is reproduced in the image above, for example, was producing writing of baffling complexity, full of images and phrases — to say nothing of the modern art style in which he wrote them! — which were presumably significant in some way to him, but which Bacon considers to be the productions of a deeply deranged mind.
It is interesting to note, too, in his afterword, that Bacon apparently considers poor spelling to be a sign of incipient insanity, quoting in full three letters from the relatives of patients, and describing them as being from “…what is called the sane portion of the public.” (23)
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